Sleep

For a couple weeks there, we were having a tough time with Aaron and sleep. It started when he was sick and he didn't seem to go back to normal even when he was better. I'm so used to him going down fairly well most nights, that I thought his crying and screaming must be because he was teething or not feeling well in some way (even though it didn't start until we put him in bed).

Then, last Saturday, Kim was kind enough to babysit so we could go out to dinner. We told her that about every other night, he wouldn't go down easy, and I told her what we did. The two times prior to last Saturday that he hadn't gone down, Thom had walked Aaron back and forth in his room and gotten him settled down within 30 minutes. This was a huge improvement over some of the nights from when he was sick and we spent hours trying to get him to calm down and go to sleep.

So we get home from dinner and she tells us that he didn't go down easy, but that it was a temper tantrum, no doubt in her mind. She has 2 kids, so I figure she knows what she is talking about, and I kind of suspected that was part of it. She said she went back in to soothe him a few times, but he kept getting more and more upset because she wouldn't pick him up. Eventually, she stopped going in and he was asleep within about 25 minutes (from when she first put him down).

Well, that was good to hear. We figured we could wait him out next time. We expected him to cry for much, much longer. But since we'd been picking him up, sometimes walking him around the house, and he had still ended up crying and upset for long periods, letting him cry for 25 minutes didn't sound so bad.

So the next night, we were ready. Part of my plan has also been to put him down for his afternoon nap 30 minutes earlier and to try to get him to bed closer to 7:30, rather than almost 8:00. So far, since the night Kim let him cry it out, though, he has gone down easy for us every night.

On Tuesday, though, when I put him down for his afternoon nap, he immediately stood up and started crying. I decided to leave him anyway, and within 2 minutes, he had stopped screaming, within 3 minutes, he had stopped crying. Within 20 minutes, he was asleep. I was so happy!

One other night this week, he woke up at 4:30am. I nursed him as I still do if he wakes up in the early morning, and then went to put him back down. He stood up and started crying. I tried walking him back and forth in his room for 5-10 minutes since I didn't want to wake Thom up so close to when we had to get up for work. But my back was killing me and I had to put him back down. Even though he was tired, he started crying again, but I left him to go back to our room. In only a minute, he quieted down and apparently went back to sleep. He didn't cry again until 6:15am.

So we are learning. And we are all sleeping better. This morning, I heard him stir around 4:45am and I thought "Please, please don't wake up." And he didn't. In fact, he didn't wake up until after Thom got up and started the coffee. There is hope.